The melee combat feels laboured, the boss fights repetitive and contrived, while the timed sequences largely frustrate to the point of desperate exasperation.

The Unfinished Swan is gentle and beguiling, but also thematically patchy and insecure in its own merits, choosing to constantly introduce less interesting new gameplay systems rather than fully explore any single motif.

But the bigger problem seems to be that developer Bluepoint Games has gone after two audiences at once, and it hasn't really done enough for either.

An entertaining package when it gets things right, but it's also riddled with design flaws, technical flaws and various minor irritations that conspire to detract from your overall enjoyment.

If you can get over a difficult start and fancy a lean take on the survival genre, Atomfall delivers an intriguing tale worth discovering.

Kinect Sports Rivals is a well-constructed game with an enjoyable structure and smartly integrated multiplayer. But it's already looking dated as it continues to struggle against the limitations of its chosen interface.

The First Descendant is neither bad nor outstanding. It doesn't do anything particularly well, but it doesn't do anything insanely badly either. A mid-range shooter that is outshone by the greats of the genre.

Vietcong and its expansion pack ultimately succeed in providing an approximation of the horrors of jungle warfare. The shit-scared feeling of imminent death is translated as well as anyone has managed to date, although perhaps for many FPS fans this might not equate to a fun gaming experience.

An open-world Hawaii and a generously spirited racer, chafed by always-online irritations and a lack of originality.

If you have any love for the manga, feel free to add the final scar to the tally. For everyone else, this is just an old-school brawler that's partial to shouting ATATATATATATA. Because you're already dead.

It has inspired moments and a substantial single-player venture, but the whole thing is undermined by the terrible presentation and the all-permeating impression that Red Steel isn't quite finished, from the story-board-sketch cut-scenes to the jerky animation and weird, basic, placeholder textures.

Had Ascaron reigned in the content a little, and polished a smaller game to a higher standard, the score below would have been at least a couple of marks higher.

It's deeply frustrating. There are some great ideas in here, the presentation is top-notch and the options are plentiful, but none of these good intentions add up to a game of any real depth or longevity.

With only genre basics in its bag of tricks, and hobbled at every turn by clumsy implementation, in a gaming landscape that already offers Battlefield 1943 and Call of Duty: World at War's Nazi Zombies mode, Wolfenstein's bargain basement charms are of limited appeal.

Despite some truly awful sections to put up with, enough of the old magic remains to make it worth sticking with if you loved the original. The real puzzle is how Telltale let it out of the door in this state.

The starkness of the choice - RTS or RPG - is quite arresting. Sadly, it was also plainly a balancing nightmare.

Cities of Tomorrow makes SimCity a better game but, unfortunately, it still doesn't make SimCity a particularly good game. While its presentation is excellent and the act of laying out a city is alarmingly addictive, nurturing and developing that city is less compelling.

Mortal Kombat 1 envisions an exciting future with fluid combat, a fantastic story mode, and superb visuals - but receding features, underbaked mechanics, and a dated online experience keep it in the past.

Knights in Tight Spaces expands on every part of the Fights in Tight Spaces template, but an abundance of new ideas swamps the clarity the original game had.

Overall, when you strip away our automatic affection for the universe, you're left with a simple story full of thin characters and predictable twists, where the combat quickly descends into a repetitive war of attrition, and a small suite of online modes that can't compete with the bigger boys in the genre.

All the effort in the world won't make up for a lack of vision. This game is blind to imagination and focus.

The opportunity to revisit Human Revolution is a welcome one, but this is a competent expansion rather than an unmissable one.

True Crime is a game looking to score the ultimate dope hit of Grand Theft Auto genius, and it has the contacts to make such a score, but fails to use them.

Lumino City is an interesting design sketch, then, but the real building work is yet to be done.

It's simple, but has noodles of charm.

There's just not enough at stake to make this secrecy worthwhile.

There's no question that Order & Chaos Online is a remarkable – albeit cheeky - achievement for the mobile gaming scene. You shouldn't buy it because it's an outstanding game (it's not - at least not yet), or because you'll receive an experience on a par with it's clear inspiration (you won't). While it's certainly a thrilling ride in the short-term, longer-term it will simply leave you pining for WOW itself.

As effective as the Hundred Cell method may be, it would have been good to see more fun exercises included instead of just yet more black-and-white sums. The exercises are too simple for adults.